Battle Sickness
by catalystkrish
Summary: Caught between a horde of Temujai and a cliff, Will is very nearly dead. Caught between time and distance, Halt can't seem to get to his apprentice fast enough. Started off as a one-shot, but turning into a chapter fic. Warning: may cause severe bouts of crying and sadness.
1. Chapter 1

Halt had seen it before.

It came in moments of hopelessness, when there was nothing to do but give up. You tried to fight it. You dreamt of miracles that would save you. You constructed your own future in your mind and made it reality.

When it didn't work, everything came crashing down.

Halt knew the feeling. He knew what it was like, standing on the edge of a mental precipice, wanting to jump but holding back, too human to let go. He knew the emptiness and the pain. He knew how it changed you.

But he'd never been on the flip-side before.

Now he sat astride Abelard, on the other side of an impossibly large plain, galloping across at top speed. He had long since passed the charging Araluen battlehorses, but even the superior speed and stamina of Abelard couldn't get him to his apprentice in time.

There was a row of soaring cliffs that plunged down to the sea on the other side of the plain. Will was cornered by fifty Temujai warriors, fighting in vain to stay alive as the space between him and the cliff lessened. The Temujai kept coming as more backup arrived. Fifty became seventy. They were toying with him.

Halt could feel his backside bruising as he bounced in Abelard's saddle. If only he relaxed a bit, released the tension in his body- he was no good to Will bruised and battered. Abelard was torn between his master's comfort and Will's safety.

"Keep going!" Halt gritted. He could feel his heart clenching with every passing second. God- Will could be dead by now.

Will wasn't dead, but he was dangerously close. A Temuje had wounded him severely across the stomach, and blood had soaked his cloak through. He could feel the life ebbing from him.

Little did he know that this was the pivotal moment. If he gave in to his wound, he would die peacefully. If he fought, the strain would knock him into a coma that would likely kill him as well.

Halt would have told him to give in. Better painlessly that with fanfare. But Halt was not there yet, and Will was a Ranger.

So he fought.

The Temujai watched in grudging admiration as the boy held off three warriors with his knife, all the while spilling blood. Finally, he collapsed, unable to keep fighting. But he was still alive.

He thought of Alyss and Horace, the love of his life and his best friend. He thought of Evanlyn and everything they'd been through. He thought of Gilan, the staying influence on his life.

He thought of Halt.

Halt was fighter, he knew. He had to keep going, for Halt. He had to stay alive until his mentor reached him.

And the strain became too much. Something in the great works, something in Will, snapped.

Halt burst from the trees separating the Temujai from the wide plain he'd just crossed. He met the warriors with a deadly hail of arrows, taking out half their number. The remaining levelled their spears at him, confident that forty-five Temujai could route one Ranger. But the manic fury in Halt's eyes said otherwise. The senior Ranger was, as a Skandian would put it, going berserk. He was charged with a killing rage, fueled by the sight of Will's limp figure slumped on the ground, bloody and battered.

The Temujai saw the look in Halt's eyes and turned tail. There is nothing so frightening as someone who is not afraid of death.

Halt threw himself from Abelard's saddle before the horse had even stopped and pulled Will into his arms. He rocked back and forth, holding his apprentice gently, tears dampening the boy's hair.

Will couldn't die. Halt had sworn to keep him safe. The boy was as good as his son. He would not die.

Sir Rodney, Horace, and Gilan arrived shortly after, accompanied by thirty or so Araluen soldiers. They caught sight of Will wrapped in Halt's cloak, bleeding and unresponsive. They saw Halt's anguish and stopped dead in their tracks.

Horace ran forward, eyes wild. "He isn't-!"

Halt shook his head, pain and anger etched in the lines of his face. "Not yet. Not as dead as those Temujai will be." The pure hate in Halt's voice was frightening.

"What do we do?" asked Sir Rodney, riding up. "What's wrong with Will?"

"He's in a coma," said Halt, taking a shaky breath. "We Rangers call it battle sickness."

Gilan, standing nearby, blanched. "Oh, God," he said.

"What's battle sickness?" asked Horace worriedly.

Halt looked down at Will. "It comes when a Ranger forcefully pulls himself out of death. It's something very few people can do, and if almost always results in… this." He gestured towards his apprentice. "Will may be done with the physical battle, but he's waging a mental war in that head of his."

Gilan jogged over. "We have to get him help." He made to pick up Will's body, but Halt stopped him.

"I've got it," the Ranger said gruffly. Then, seemingly effortlessly, he slid his arms under Will and hoisted him up, carrying him to Abelard. Tug followed behind as Halt took a seat on Abelard with Will.

The two horses took off at full speed. Gilan, Horace, and Sir Rodney watched.

"That's the most emotion I've seen Halt show," said Sir Rodney finally.

Gilan shrugged. "It's only natural. To Halt, Will is more than an apprentice. He's Halt's son."


	2. Chapter 2

**Some people wanted a second installment... so here it is. I cried while writing it.**

There was a phrase that Will had often heard repeated by soldiers. A comparison for their pain. A pain like a splitting skull.

Will had always thought the phrase ridiculous. How would any of them know what it felt like to have your head split open? It wasn't like anyone had ever survived the experience, much less them. Why didn't people just assume the pain based on how serious the injury was? An club to the head was sure to hurt. Was there any reason to compare it to a splitting skull?

Yet here he was, sliding in and out of a blood-soaking reality. He felt as if a Skandian had just taken a battleaxe to his head.

He heard Halt talking to him, his voice low and urgent but strangely muffled. Will had to strain to hear him, and it hurt.

"Hold on, Will," the Ranger said. "Just hold on. We're almost there. Hold on for me."

 _I'm trying,_ Will wanted to say. _It hurts, Halt. It hurts like all hell._

He wanted more than anything to stay conscious. Images flashed through his mind, horrible images of blood and death and pain. He didn't want to lose himself to that. He wanted to feel Halt holding him, carrying him through the suffering.

But it was too hard to hold on. Slowly, slowly, he drifted away from reality.

 _He stood on a battlefield. Bodies littered the ground, crumpled and bloodied and unmoving. Vultures soared high above, circling down lower to feast. The sky was streaked with bruise purple and fiery orange and the crimson of fresh blood._

 _He was the only one alive, standing in the midst of a horrible massacre. He saw Araluen soldiers among the dead, soldiers he'd fought beside before. He saw Erak and his Skandians. They'd been so powerful in life, and he couldn't over the vulnerability that clung to them in death. All the soul and spirit had been sucked out of them. Soon, there would be nothing left but bones._

 _He looked to his left and stifled a cry of horror. Alyss and Evanlyn lay side by side, their blonde hair matted and streaked with blood. A spear had buried itself in Evanlyn's chest, right through her heart. Alyss's head had been severed from her neck, and lolled in a pool of dark blood._

 _Vomit and bile rose up into Will's throat. He fell to his knees and wretched, wanting to erase the image from his mind. Two of the people he loved most in the entire world. Dead._

 _Where'd he been? Why hadn't he saved them?_

 _Guilt warred with sorrow in his chest, tightening it until he couldn't breathe. His sobs mingled with screams of agony. What had he done to deserve this?_

 _He stumbled to his feet shakily, struggling to force air into his lungs. A glint of silver caught his eye, and he turned._

 _Gilan was curled into a ball. Three spears and a battleaxe stuck out from his body and awkward angles. Enemy bodies were scattered around him, impaled by arrows and decapitated by Gilan's sword._

 _The pain rose in Will again, choking him. He screamed at the sky until his voice was hoarse. The vultures matched his cries with pitiless screeches of their own._

 _It happened again and again, as he walked through the carnage. He saw King Duncan, all his limbs chopped off and littered around him. He saw Horace, frozen in death with a silent scream on his features. Everyone he'd ever loved was there, on that battlefield, dead._

 _There was one body in the distance, and Will knew who it was without even going up to it. He didn't want to see it. Seeing Halt dead would be the last straw for him._

 _Yet somehow he knew that if he didn't see it, feel the pain, and accept it, he would never be able to leave this hell._

 _He shuffled forward, dread filling the cavity in his chest where his heart had once beat. It was as if he wore iron shoes, holding him down, drowning him in his own sorrow._

 _Halt's body was neither bloodied nor maimed. Instead, it was grotesquely well-preserved. His skin was pale and cold, his eyes closed as if in peaceful sleep. Someone had even crossed his arms over his chest._

 _A small dart stuck out of his neck. Will, his hand shaking, pulled it out. The tip was coated with blood and something green._

 _Poison._

 _How ironic that the greatest warrior in the world had been felled by a single poison dart._

 _The pain came again, but not in the sharp clarity it had before. It was a slow burn now, eating him from the inside. He felt numb all over. He'd simply expended everything in him._

 _His brain couldn't process what he was seeing. Halt couldn't be dead, It was impossible. He couldn't die._

 _But he was._

 _Will closed his eyes and let the pain settle in, let it root itself in his veins._ He is dead, _Will thought._ They're all dead.

 _Up until this point, he'd felt like his was hanging on to the edge of a precipice, four fingers away from plunging into a bottomless abyss. With every death, some force had peeled away a finger from the rock. Until Halt, he'd been holding on with one finger._

 _Having accepted the death of his mentor, Will finally lost his grip. The world spun around him, and the ground dropped away._

He opened his eyes. He was in a bed, in the infirmary.

"You almost died," said Halt, and Will turned to look at him.

"So did you," the boy replied, and smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Back by popular demand... but this one's another crier.**

"Where's Will?" Gilan asked, forking the last of his apple pie into his mouth with practiced dexterity.

Jenny, dusting off flour-covered hands on her apron, shrugged. "Does anyone ever know, these days? From what I hear, he's been disappearing a lot lately. Even gave Halt the slip!"

She chuckled, thinking of all the times Will had "vanished" during their ward days. One moment, he'd be there, the next, gone. They'd find him several hours later, perched in some tree, laughing.

Gilan frowned. "Yes, Halt's growing worried. Will hasn't been the same since, well, you know."

"Oh, don't worry about him," Jenny said. "It's only been a week. He just needs some time alone, to think things through."

"I'm afraid of what the thinking will end up in," Gilan muttered. "Probably that we're better off without him. Will's great in the field, but he had a bit of a… hero complex."

Jenny laughed. "Don't you all! Horace, Halt, even you. Too damn worried about saving everyone else to worry about yourself. Will's fine, I tell you. Stop worrying." She straightened and snatched up Gilan's empty plate. "Another slice?"

Gilan hesitated, then shook his head. "I'm good, thanks," he said. "It was wonderful, but I think I'm going to go looking for Will. It's getting dark. I don't want him caught in the forest when the light goes."

Both he and Jenny knew that Will, as possibly the greatest Ranger the Corps had ever produced, would have no problem navigating back to the palace in the dark. It would be considerably harder, however, for the king's soldiers and Rangers to find him if he decided to sneak away among the shadows. Will had been through things neither of them could imagine, and it was important to keep an eye on him at all times until everything was back to normal.

So Jenny let Gilan go, watching him as he slipped through the door and into the night. She understood his worry, his unease. Rangers were like family to one another, and she knew that Gilan considered Will his own brother.

And if truth be told, Jenny was a bit worried herself.

 _Drumbeats sound to the beating of his heart. War drums. Pulsing in his mind, his chest, through his veins. Drowning him in the rhythm, swallowing him whole._

 _Blood spilled over a carpet of bodies. Halt. Gilan. Horace. Evanlyn, Alyss, Duncan. Erak. Jenny and George. Everyone he's ever cared about._

Your fault, _the drumbeat rumbles._ All your fault.

 _He can't move, can't speak. He can't breathe. He is a drowning man, clawing at the sky as it vanishes from view. He is a dying man, pressing shaking hands to a wound that won't stop bleeding._

 _Tears cut rivers into the blood-soaked soil, turning red. Swimming in red. Choking with red. Everything, red._

 _He is a dead man, his bones trophies for the circling vultures._

 _And the drums pull him under once again._

"Will!"

Gilan crashes through the woods, not trying to be sneaky, not trying to hide his desperation. "Will! WILL!"

Moonlight lanced down between the leaves, pooling in circles on the forest floor. Everything else was shrouded in pitch. Night had fallen half-an-hour ago, and still Gilan hadn't found Will.

There were no signs. No snapped branches, no footprints, no crushed leaves. Nothing. As if Will had simply glided through the wood, his feet never touching the ground.

Gilan's eyes scanned the area over and over again, his head swiveling the way Halt had taught him. His ears, trained to pick up the slightest of sounds, caught the soft, polite cough from thirty feet away.

He spun, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, and he saw-

"Halt!"

The older Ranger stepped from the shadows, moonlight falling on his features. He looked younger, more haunting, the moonlight smoothing away his wrinkles and giving him an air of mystery and intrigue.

"Gilan. Am I safe in assuming we are here on a common mission?"

"Yes!" Gilan felt an overwhelming sense of relief at Halt's arrival. He could use the help. "Finding Will, right?"

Halt nodded once. "How long have you been out here?"

"Two and a half hours. You?"

"Four."

Gilan gaped at his former mentor. "Four hours? You've been searching for four hours?" Any relief he had felt evaporated. If Halt couldn't find Will after four hours of searching, then Gilan didn't stand a chance.

"Four." Halt exhaled slowly. "I've picked up a few trails, but they lead to nothing. He doesn't to be found, and I expect we won't find him until next morning."

"No," whispered Gilan. "No, you can't say that. You can't give up."

Halt scowled. "Who said I was giving up?"

They trooped through the forest for another two hours, searching every nook and cranny, inside every tree hollow, behind every bush. They searched until their legs ached and their eyes hurt, until Gilan's stomach had completely forgotten about the apple pie he'd eaten and began to growl for sustenance.

Neither of them wanted to be the one to say it, the one to give up. In the end, Gilan spoke up, knowing that old Halt was stubborn enough to keep them here until daybreak.

"Let's go," he said quietly. "We're no use to him if we're half-starved and sleep-deprived. I'll ask Ev- Cassandra and Horace to organize a search party. We can mobilize nearby Rangers. Heck, I'm sure Crowley'd get off his fat ass for a few hours, too."

Halt's lips pressed together in what might have been a smile. "All right," he said. "We'll go. But only because you're too weak to continue."

Gilan rolled his eyes. They turned back and cut through the woods, scanning the area for anything they might've missed as they went.

The lanterns in Gilan's cabin were out, and he took special care not to make a sound as he shed his cloak and boots, entered, and slipped into bed beside Jenny.

"Four hours."

Her voice was soft, but it pricked through him like a dozen needles. The vulnerability, the uncertainty, the fear in her words pulled at his heart.

"I know," he whispered. "Halt and I- we looked everywhere. Thrice."

"You couldn't find him?"

"Not even a trace."

She sighed softly. "Are you sure he's in the woods?"

"There's nowhere else he could be."

They lay in cold silence. The weight of worry pressed down on Gilan's chest and shoulders. He'd failed Will.

"You'll find him tomorrow," Jenny whispered. "Sleep."

And they drifted off into a slumber of tormented cries and familiar figures, just out of reach.

 _Tick-tock. Tick-tock._

 _If the sun is shining, he does not know. If the moon is dying, he does not know. If the stars have fallen, if the sky has withered, he does not know. He does not know._

 _He has been damned to an existence in nothingness. He lives among void creatures, lost dreams and forsaken hopes. He cries tears of blood, and they trickle from milky-white eyes to soak right back into his skin. His bones push through, sun-bleached and stripped of flesh. He is at once living, and most certainly dead._


End file.
